August 21, 2024

Part 2: Neither Horseshoes nor Fishhooks (book review: Three-Way Fight)

Part 2 of a two-part review of Three Way Fight: Revolutionary Politics and Antifascism, Xtn Alexander, Matthew N. Lyons, and Janeen Porter (eds). Kerseplebedeb, 2024.

IV

What I would see as a lurking danger of the Three Way Fight analysis is a temptation to abstentionism – to simply sitting out political confrontations which are analysed as being “the State vs the fascists”. Being against both fascism and the bourgeois State offers clearer lines of action when the Left is an independent force with real political power which can manoeuvre on its own terms. This was classically the position in previous decades when “anti-fascism” meant not much more than physically keeping the fascists off the streets; or, a century ago, when a mass workers’ movement and mass workers’ parties were forces to be reckoned with.

When it comes to mass politics in the present day, however, is there any place that antifascist forces (in the core capitalist countries) are capable of simultaneously challenging both an emboldened fascist movement and State forces on the other? What, then, are the contemporary alternatives to abstention, to letting the State and the fascists fight?

Let’s examine this in terms of a current issue on which Fightback has recently concentrated: the Russian invasion and occupation of Ukraine. In 2022, according to the book’s introduction,

Three Way Fight proponents were in fact divided between some who advocated support for Ukraine’s popular resistance forces against Russian imperialism, others who rejected such support as implicit endorsement for Ukraine’s capitalist state, and still others who were conflicted or unsure about how to respond. This division pointed to an underlying lack of theoretical clarity: beyond rejecting simplistic claims that any opposition to US or Western imperialism is progressive, supporters of three way fight politics have not developed a general framework for navigating geopolitics, particularly for situations where forces supported by the United States face imperialist aggression by rival powers. (451)

This seems strange given a couple of pages earlier, where Matthew Lyons is quoted as having come to an eminently defensible position on the Israel-Hezbollah conflict of 2006:

Lyons criticized Hezbollah as right wing while urging that leftists should nonetheless support it against the Israeli military. (426)

Lyons seems to have reproduced the distinction, made by Hal Draper and others in the Trotskyist tradition,

between military support of a given armed struggle and political support to a given political organization including a government) which may be officially “in charge” of that armed struggle…
For most people, including liberals, social democrats and opportunists of every stripe, “support” means support, period. For Marxists, it never has. This is one reason why, not infrequently, political leaders of a national struggle have been almost as unhappy about being supported by revolutionists as by being opposed.ⁱ

The most trivial example of this approach would be that working for Allied victory in the Second World War did not require socialists to defend Winston Churchill or Joseph Stalin; only the working peoples who would have had it much worse under an Axis victory. Or, to be more contemporary –support for the military defence of Gaza against IDF genocide should require no political support for Hamas theocracy and atrocities against civilians.

In those terms, Lyons’ support for the Israeli military machine getting pushed back from southern Lebanon in 2006, even by a right-wing militia acting in cahoots with the Iranian theocracy, makes perfect sense. The only difference in the Ukrainian situation is that the United States and its NATO allies are backing the Ukrainian resistance (however half-heartedly and cynically). Even though Lyons rightly rejects “simplistic claims that any opposition to US or Western imperialism is progressive”, in the hothouse atmosphere of Western radical politics, there is strong social pressure against any analysis which might suggest taking the same side as United States foreign policy.

In fact, the pressure to always see State/establishment forces as the main enemies – leading to an abstentionist Fishhook analysis, or to actual Red-Brown alliances – is huge. Take for example Matthew Lyons’ chapter on the Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI), a think-tank supported by not only the liberal billionaire George Soros but the more right-leaning Koch brothers,ⁱⁱ which promotes itself as opposing “extremism” of both Left and Right – that is, the classical Horseshoe model. Lyons discusses its recruitment as a senior research fellow of Alexander Reid Ross, geography professor and author of Against the Fascist Creep.ⁱⁱⁱ

[T]he combination of Soros and Koch support evokes an attempt to foster a broad—but anti-Trump—coalition within the ruling class… [B]y signing on with NCRI [Reid Ross] has repudiated the left, yet his background helps burnish the NCRI’s image as an inclusive home for anti-“hate” scholars of every persuasion. (3214, 3229, my emphasis)

While the NCRI’s “anti-extremism” framework is to be rejected,^iv the question of whether accepting funding from it means a repudiation of the Left may be debated by reasonable people; one might wonder whether similar accusations could be thrown at researchers working for The Disinformation Project in this country.^v However, some very unreasonable people have taken the condemnation much further. Rhyd Wildermuth of the Gods & Radicals blog, for example, argues that since Reid Ross is “an ideological pillar of American anti-fascist thought” that brings the whole structure of the Three Way Fight ideology into question; to which Wildermuth proposes his own alternative, that “the capitalist state and the fascists will inevitably side with each other” – classical Fishhook theory.^vi In fact, as the book we are reviewing ably demonstrates, rather than being “the CEO of Antifa”, Reid Ross has mainly popularised Three-Way Fight ideas which have developed over decades.

Unfortunately, some antifascists in Aotearoa New Zealand have republished Wildermuth’s article on social media as support for Fishhook Theory; possibly without being aware that Wildermuth has been called out by other anarchists for softness on TERFs and other reactionary-trending-to-fascist causes with which he wishes to make common cause.^vii If you’ve followed Fightback‘s work on the Red-Brown infection of anticapitalist politics over recent years, you will not be surprised by that last piece of information.

The attacks on Reid Ross in fact open something of a rabbit hole. The Cautiously Pessimistic blog, which offers an amusing takedown of Wildermuth^viii, had, three years previously, detailed another attack on the concept of “Red Brown alliances” which also seemed to hinge on personal attacks on Reid Ross.^ix This was in the same year the Southern Poverty Law Center was pushed by legal threats into taking down a piece by Reid Ross on Red-Brown alliances.^x Paranoia is an occupational hazard for those charting the murky underworld of fascist politics and its (sometimes friendly, sometimes oppositional) relationship with State agencies, but the concentration on one particular author by those defending Red-Brown alliances provokes the question of whether this target was decided, somewhere, and by whom.^xi

The common factor here is that, just as the Horseshoe and Fishhook models are both based on binary oppositions, the insistence that we choose between them, or that if we reject one we must accept the other, is another such opposition.

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V

Another danger arises in a perverse downgrading of reactionary trends in capitalist politics which are not strictly speaking fascist. Notwithstanding his excellent analyses elsewhere in the book, Don Hamerquist’s 2020 article, “Distinguishing the Possible from the Probable” is quite a disturbing example of this.

Hamerquist’s analysis starts from a cogent rebuttal of arguments from some activists that the whole global ruling class is moving towards fascism, or even some kind of “neoliberal fascism” (which seems a contradiction in terms). This, says Hamerquist, “assumes an essential commonality between different segments of the transnational capitalist system” (3309); that is, that the naked authoritarianism and violence which is obvious on the periphery of the global system will not necessarily reproduce itself in the capitalist core.

There are good capitalist reasons for a lack of ruling-class support for fascism in societies where capitalist hegemony is deeply entrenched and broad based… a broadly distributed ruling-class understanding that the not-so-ultimate potential of fascist politics in the capitalist core is the “common ruin of the contending classes”—with their own class, the party of capital, being a likely casualty. (3321)

So far, so plausible. But Hamerquist – writing four years ago – goes on to argue that transnational capital has a more complicated relationship with “populism”: that while transnational capital is generally hostile to (right-wing) populism (3383), it

has a variety of incentives and opportunities to provide tactical latitude to either right or left populist movements (and governments), in order to saddle them with the responsibility for dealing with emerging crises in circumstances where even partial success is quite unlikely. … The broad campaigns to hamstring Trump or remove him from office, to reverse Brexit, to limit the successes of anti-EU campaigns, as well as the successful strangulation of the feeble Greek social democracy are all related parts of this hostile response of transnational capitalist elites to potentially disruptive populisms. (3443, 3516, emphasis added)

Hamerquist seems to be arguing that populist successes (never allowed to go too far) act as something of a safety valve for transnational capital. But if transnational capital is decisive in the final analysis, and transnational capital is hostile to all populism, Right-wing forms included, why did the economically damaging “hard Brexit” prevail? Are we supposed to condemn globalist capital and the neoliberal establishment seeking to undermine Trump’s programme?^xii And – if Hamerquist is right that Left-populism and Right-populism are equally likely to be cynically propped up then scapegoated – which section of global capital is supporting *Left-*populist forces?

To his credit, Hamerquist allows that

significant parts of the military-industrial complex and some extractive industries face specific competitive and ecological challenges that give them a compelling interest in economic nationalism. … The supportive attitude of this bloc of capital for Trump’s regime has been obvious, as are its defining impacts on Trump’s MAGA variant of nationalism. (3398)

So surely it makes more sense to argue that there is in fact a split in transnational capital, with one part of it being sincerely in favour of reactionary, nationalist politics. Yet Hamerquist goes on to argue that these factions of capital are “generally motivated by perceptions of their short-term, largely economic interests, not by some larger ideological purpose” (3803). This is definitely not the case, however, for a section of capital which Hamerquist does not mention at all: “tech reactionaries” such as Elon Musk or Peter Thiel who sincerely believe in a “woke mind virus” thwarting their plans for interplanetary expansion powered by artificial intelligence, and are heavily backing “National Conservative” politics. In fact, some authors have gone as far as arguing that, yes, Peter Thiel is literally a fascist.^xiii We might also question whether the Chinese ruling class, for whom mass support for nationalism (in the guise of “socialism with Chinese characteristics”) is an essential factor underpinning their authoritarian rule, don’t really mean it.^xiv We might finally note that Viktor Órban’s Hungary finds no contradiction between its reactionary, illiberal and nativist system and being sustained by large yearly subsidies from the very globalist European Union.^xv

Hamerquist’s thesis that the interests of Right-populism are counterposed to those of transnational capital has led him to what in retrospect is a shockingly incorrect prediction of the future course of the Trump movement:

As his original nativist and protectionist policies are forced to become more concrete, at penalty of losing plausibility, both ruling-class and popular attitudes toward Trump’s administration will undergo further changes. The most predictable outcome is the erosion of support from the overtly reactionary and fascist-tending populist components of his initial base…
It can’t be repeated too often that when the global socioeconomic situation deteriorates … a substantial and rapid fragmentation of the current “Trumpism” is inevitable. (3493)

None of this has happened. The Trump coalition has in fact become stronger and deeper over the last four years, to the extent that it has eliminated all opposition within the Republican Party itself. Hamerquist is half-right that Trump has built substantial trust and support among the ruling classes since 2016. He is wrong that this has been at the expense of the support of his popular base.^xvi To some extent, this seems to be an instance of a common misconception among radical theorists, that people react mainly to material rather than psychic or status-driven incentives. Trump’s messaging, the “permission” he gives for reactionary mobilisation and even violence, is more decisive for his ability to build a base than whatever material gains might result from him being in office, in other words.

But given this “inevitable” divorce between Trump and his fascist-infused base, Hamerquist seems to have talked himself into a position – not an unprecedented one, as we will see – that Trump and his movement are not a real danger:

Despite Trump’s evident willingness to compromise on any and all of the significant challenges to the international and domestic capitalist status quo that his 2016 campaign intimated—and despite his slide toward orthodox Ameri-centric conservatism—for the anti-Trump so-called “resistance” he remains a dangerous rebel and disrupter.

The strange polarization between a dubious personalized populism and the bizarrely exaggerated opposition to it is only one potential interpretation of our current circumstances. (3531, 3538, emphasis added)

There is an old Muppet Show sketch where a scientist invents a Gorilla Detector, then allows himself to be attacked by a gorilla because the detector isn’t going off. Don Hamerquist’s apparent distinction between fascism (a real threat) and Right-wing populism (ostensibly a paper tiger, hyped up by global capital and contemptible “resist libs” to scare us) seems similar, and to lead to a similarly painful conclusion.

But Hamerquist goes even further, going on to argue that the real danger is that, faced with increasing instability and lack of legitimacy, global capital will strike a Leftish pose – “global social democracy, [with] official antifascism again being used both to corral leftists and to legitimize state repression”: (491)

The transnational ruling class stands to gain significant benefits by presenting populism as a proximate threat—a foreshadowing of global fascism. This allows the resistance to the Trump variant of populism to present itself as a defense of parliamentary democracy and “good” capitalism…

the initiatives with the most potential to successfully defend capital and seriously damage the revolutionary left will be those that tame reform coalitions to deal with some social costs of capitalist development within the framework of the continued dominance of capital. (3541, 3780)

But in the four years since this was written, there has been no such move towards global social democracy. Although this couldn’t have been predicted in 2020, the Left-populist movements which seemed to be taking off in the 2010s, such as SYRIZA in Greece, Podemos in Spain or the Jeremy Corbyn and Bernie Sanders movements, have all fizzled out or had their support base switch to Right-populism.^xvii Most governments of advanced capitalist states, where they aren’t cynically throwing bones to the fascist movements by cracking down on immigrants, trans people or reproductive rights, adopt a classic Horseshoe position – “against all extremism of both Left and Right” – as exemplified by the French establishment in July’s legislative elections, and US commentators who put pro-Palestinian demonstrators on the same level as Israeli genocidaires. Sometimes these administrations also promote supportable reforms to try to expand their base, but it would take a great effort to analyse Joe Biden’s “Inflation Reduction Act”, for example, as an adoption of Left-populism.

So why is all this a problem in a book about combating fascism, as opposed to Right-wing populism more broadly? Because, like fascism, Right-populism – of the Trump variety, the Marine Le Pen variety, or the Peters/Seymour/Brian Tamaki variety in Aotearoa – is a direct threat to queer/trans people, reproductive rights, and even organised workers, in a way which does not require it to be in power. Although not an anti-system, insurgent movement like fascism (except on its conspiratorial fringes), Right-populists are perfectly capable of using harassment, abuse, verbal and physical violence to make vulnerable populations’ lives miserable, and to “tilt” the field of electoral politics their way. The “stochastic lynch mobs” riled up by social media entrepreneurs against Drag Queen Story Hours and pro-Palestine demonstrators (or, more recently, against migrant and Muslim communities across England and northern Ireland) are clear and present dangers to working people and their communities, regardless of whether these mobs include actual fascists or “only” Right-wing populists. Hamerquist’s analysis would have us looking the wrong way in the face of clear and present threats to working class and marginalised communities, having persuaded ourselves that the real threat is global elites posing as Leftists.

If, as the cynical saying goes, “programme generates theory” (that is, analysis tends to confirm the wisdom of what you wanted to do anyway) what is the “programme” behind this analysis? There seem to be two answers.

The first is that, bizarrely and surely unconsciously, Hamerquist is reproducing the “Third Period” analysis of capitalism which sent the Comintern down the suicidal path of abstention from the fight against fascism. This was essentially a miscomprehension that capitalism was on its last legs; that the only serious obstacle to world Communist revolution was a social-democratic and labour movement with a stake in propping up the unreformable and doomed system. This made it an equally deadly opponent as the fascists; hence they were decried as “social fascists”, or in Stalin’s own words, “the moderate wing of fascism”.^xviii

Similarly, Hamerquist seems to be arguing that the global capitalist system is so imminently threatened by rebellions from below, that not only will transnational capital cynically promote both Right and Left populisms in an attempt to stave this off, but for this reason social democracy and “official anti-fascism” are the strategy they are more likely to use to do so.

Hamerquist’s warnings about “the potentials for co-optation [by the State of metropolitan radicals] —particularly co-optation in the parliamentary arena” (3454) would make sense in a situation where there were a really existing proletarian anti-capitalist movement from which global capital needed to draw away support by “Left-wing” posturing. And certainly, according to many of the contributions to this book, there was something like that in the United States of 2020 – the Black Lives Matter movement and the associated “George Floyd uprising”.^xix An entire section of this book is devoted to contemporary analyses of BLM, whose generally over-optimistic mood is summed up in Shemon Salam and Arturo Castillo’s declaration that “the rebellion has produced a new political subjectivity—the George Floyd rebel… The American proletariat has finally emerged and entered history.” (4753)

The George Floyd uprising was no doubt a serious mass movement, a thrilling spectacle of revolt from below which at least temporarily shook the structures of power in the US, creating what Jarrod Shananan, author of States of Incarceration, calls “a utopian antidote” to Trumpist politics of grievance (4955). The debate within the movement over whether to demand that the police be “defunded” or “abolished”, as his co-author Zhandara Kurti puts it, “for a brief moment… made the question of ‘reform or revolution’ less abstract and more concrete.” (5095)

Sadly, though, and for whatever reason, it didn’t last. It left behind, not organs of working-class and community power and self-defence, but an NGO which became mired in accusations of corruption.^xx Even the moderate slogan “Defund the Police” became a weapon in the hands of the Right, which persuaded the anxious middle-class that the police had already been defunded and it had led to a crime explosion.^xxi Perhaps the authors would not be happy about me quoting Trotsky again, but the following quotation is right on the nose about the problems with mistaking an upward for a downward trajectory:

On ascending the stairs a different type of movement is required from that which is needed to descend. Most dangerous is such a situation as finds a man, with the lights out, raising his foot to ascend when the steps before him lead downward.^xxii

It might be unfair to take Hamerquist to task for, four years ago, advising us to step up when the stairs were leading down. In the context of mid-2020, when burning down police stations was broadly approved of and city councils in the US were voting to abolish their police departments, it was probably a good call that the immediate danger was the liberal establishment co-opting the movement and draining it of its life – and that this is what actually happened. But the world is simply different in 2024, and this analysis should not have been republished in this year without a serious look as to whether its predictions had been borne out or falsified.

This brings us to a second potential motivation for Hamerquist’s incorrect strategic outlook, one that might not be obvious to those who haven’t been ploughing this furrow for years. One passing comment in this article would send alarm bells ringing for such people:

Matt Taibbi notes “the danger posed by Facebook, Google, and Twitter—under pressure from the Senate—organizing with groups like the Atlantic Council to fight ‘fake news’ in the name of preventing the ‘foment of discord.’” (3819)

Matt Taibbi is a name very familiar to those who have studied the Red-Brown phenomenon. He is a former radical journalist and documenter of Occupy Wall Street who, in recent years, has pivoted to an “anti-woke” position; for example, acting as an outlet for Elon Musk’s campaign to convince the world that Twitter (before Musk bought it and turned it into X) was “censoring” Right-wing views at the behest of various “Deep State” agencies.^xxiii This quote uncritically reproduces the framework that anti-disinformation campaigns sponsored by Western states or liberal factions of capital are in fact a reprehensible campaign of censorship –that reactionary or authoritarian disinformation is not a real threat, but a bogey meant to excuse establishment surveillance. Just like Trump, or Putin’s Russia.

It gets worse. In a footnote meant to downplay the extent to which Bolsonaro’s government in Brazil or Meloni’s government in Italy are expressions of a fascist creep, Hamerquist cites – on Brazil – Glenn Greenwald; and on Italy, the Spiked website. (7334-5) What do Taibbi, Greenwald, and Spiked have in common? They all promote a narrative to the Left that Right-wing populist movements are not only not dangerous to the radical movements, but are in fact positive phenomena expressing disgust with “woke” global capital. They also tend to say admiring things about Vladimir Putin’s Russia. They are, in fact, prime movers in the Red-Brown ecosystem.^xxiv

Although (to paraphrase Orwell) some things are true even if Glenn Greenwald says them, you’d better have a better source than Glenn Greenwald if you want to convince people. In previous articles I have argued that socialists whose ideas were formed before the neoliberal era tend to unconsciously assent to and promote Red-Brown narratives because opposition to neoliberalism and opposition to Western imperialism are “good enough” to be convincing. What I am arguing, then, is certainly not that Hamerquist is a Red-Brown or “soft on fascism”. It is that his impulse to argue that Trump and his movement are not fascist and therefore not a real danger (born perhaps out of a commendable instinct not to line up with liberal capital) has propelled him, perhaps unconsciously, to line up with people who want to give alibis and apologies for Right-wing populism, in a direction which actively contradicts the Three Way Fight approach. And, accordingly, that the editors of this collection should have been more alert to that.

VI

Quite often in book reviews, when you get to the conclusion, you’re supposed to say whether you recommend the book or not. The fact that this review is more than 10,000 words long – even though many of those words are critical – shows that it is simply a must-read for anyone involved in antifascist activism, but also more broadly in organising communities against both Right-wing threats and State violence, online and in meatspace. A better introduction to the basic issues could not be imagined (unless, perhaps, it took a few more sources from the Trotskyist tradition to give an alternative viewpoint to the anarchist voices).

But the real point of a political review has to be – what are the lessons to be drawn for political activity in the here and now? Specifically, in the context of Aotearoa New Zealand?

1. Independence from the state is a must

The Three Way Fight model is difficult to operate in that it poses a difficult question of strategy: how can the organised working class fight two different (and conflicting) enemies at the same time, while itself remaining independent from both of them? This requires building not only practical independence – that is, working-class and community organisations for debate and action which can take action regardless of what the cops or the NGOs think – but political independence, in the sense of building analysis and strategy which comes out of the practical experiences of those movements, rather than waiting for a lead from the State or any bourgeois political party.

The first point must be to understand the appeal that fascism has to those layers of the oppressed who are totally alienated by the system – as opposed to the downwardly-mobile middle-class layers who want to defend their privileges with violence, who are its primary base. Although Three Way Fight is clear-sighted that we have to provide a “better insurgent option” for the victims of the State and of capital than that offered by fascism, it also rejects point blank any “Red-Brown” suggestion that there can be “unity [with fascists] over seemingly shared militancy”. (4484) The problem is, then, how to compete with fascism in its appeal to those who want militant action.

The collection’s co-editor Xtn Alexander makes this excellent point, in the context of Right-wing mobilisations against COVID lockdowns:

We should really be asking if there is a growing sense on all sides that the state is becoming more—or being seen as more—illegitimate in all its branches and attached institutions….
We have to be developing, maintaining, and helping to expand class and social movements that are independent of the state. And not just independent of the state, but movements that are defined by liberatory visions, that are directed popularly and democratically, that have an intransigence to the system, and that are militant…
To some people [fascist vigilantism] looks attractive, like, “Oh, there’s people who are fighting the police. They’re fighting the state. They’re taking on the rule of the government.” That’s dangerous if we think through any kind of shared militancy there can be a connection. (4303-4310)

Matthew Lyons agrees:

neoliberalism, as a strategy of the ruling class and as a system of control, is in profound crisis. It’s failing most people in this country, not to mention other parts of the world, and it’s getting harder and harder for its proponents to patch that over. And the far right knows that, and that’s where a lot of their energy and dynamism comes from… To me, that speaks to the need for a radical alternative that refuses to cede the oppositional role to the far right. (4526-4530)

This probably goes even more in recent years in the United States, given the unelected and unaccountable Supreme Court majority’s increasing appetite to strip the remaining democratic rights (and limits on executive power) out of the system.

The question of COVID lockdowns is quite a cogent one for antifascists in Aotearoa New Zealand. Our country’s globally-recognized successes in keeping the pandemic under control were derailed by a large reactionary mobilisation (including fascist forces) which occupied the space outside Parliament buildings in Wellington in February 2022. The success of the lockdowns in keeping COVID under control had led to broad support (especially on the Left) for the restrictions imposed by Jacinda Ardern’s government, leading to a bizarre situation where socialists found themselves cheering the police on as they forcibly dispersed a protest occupation. As Matthew Lyons puts it:

This is a situation where, just as it would be dangerous to side with anti-state rightists against the state, it would also be dangerous to side with the forces of liberal repression, even if the initial target of that repression is far rightists… Because something that we’ve seen repeatedly in this country is that state repression, even in the guise of antifascism, is dangerous to our movements. (4360-2)

There is a regrettable but understandable temptation, when our forces are weak, to act as “the left wing of liberal democracy”. The “left wing” of the State closing down schools, business and playgrounds for people’s own good; or the “left wing” of organisations like NGOs funded by the state and capital which want increased surveillance of all “extremists”. But that is not going to cut any ice in a situation where increasing numbers of people no longer see existing State institutions as legitimate. The question of what an “independent working-class” approach to COVID-19 and other pandemics could or should be is left as an exercise for the reader.

2. The United Front, and diversity of tactics

However, it is also vital to remember that the Three Way Fight is against the fascists and the State. It is not against the fascists and “the liberals”. It is difficult to remember this in an era where, on both sides of the political divide, “liberal” (or the pejorative “shitlib”) is pretty much the worst anyone can accuse each other of. But liberals (of whatever class) are allies in the Three Way Fight insofar as they actively oppose fascism; and our opponents insofar as they want to rely on cops, courts, and Big Capital to do so.

Part of the sectarianism towards “liberals”, especially in the United States, is hostility to the idea that there is anything in the current neoliberal-globalist order which is worth defending (even if you don’t believe it’s all going to fall apart someday soon). When Matthew Lyons, in his critique of the NCRI’s “Horseshoe” model anti-extremism, talks of “reproducing the myth that the United States is a democracy” (3240), it is exactly this collapse of context which is at risk. There exists some level of “bourgeois democratic rights” in the United States – very limited and very unequally divided, of course – which fascism (not to mention the reactionary sectors of capital) wants to eliminate entirely, and are therefore worth defending. The belief that there is nothing of value to the working class in the existing order – that “things couldn’t be worse” – is a form of inverted “American exceptionalism” which not only reflects the narcissism of small subcultures, but is extremely dangerous in its lack of imagination, and therefore its perception of the real stakes in the Three Way Fight*.* As the Sojourner Truth Organisation put it back in 1982

To the extent that fascism becomes a mass movement, and to the extent that revolution is not an immediate possibility, the revolutionary organizations must adopt the stance of the united front, which is a defensive posture aimed at achieving an alliance for the sole purpose of stopping the fascist advance… Key to a successful struggle against fascism is the forging of a left pole within the broad united front,… defending parliamentary institutions, trade unions, etc., against fascist attacks. (633, 639, 642, emphasis added)

Defence of “bourgeois democratic” rights and institutions – no matter how impotent or hypocritical they might be – is the basis for practical alliances with liberals. “Practical and political independence for working-class anti-fascism” does not mean sectarian opposition to liberal antifascists; nor does it mean subsuming our forces in a Popular Front whose limits of action are whatever won’t scare the most conservative opponents of fascism. As Xloi and B. Sandor put it in the aftermath of January 6, 2021:

We think we should be developing a political pole that opposes both insurgent and government-backed far-right forces… We need an antifascism that doesn’t ultimately back up the state or ignore the right altogether in the hopes that the state will simply smash it. (4663)

Temporary and tactical alliances with liberal or bourgeois anti-fascist forces can only work on the basis of that independence. Thankfully, this book gives many practical examples of this happening in practice.

As we explored above, when antifascists such as Devin Zane Shaw refer to “the diversity of tactics”, this usually means making sure that the options of physical confrontation (in extremis, armed community self-defence) remain on the table. But it can also refer to the great benefit of a United Front formation – a non-sectarian alliance between independent forces means that each component of the alliance can "do what it does best”. For example, when Zhandarka Kurti says:

One of the lessons of previous moments of heightened struggles, whether in the 1930s or 1960s, has been the need of radical movements to maintain their independence from the official institutions of liberal bourgeois society and to rely on mass direct action as a means of forcing reforms instead of pursuing the usual dead-end channels of electoral politics. (5091)

But, as the meme puts it, why not both? In a broad and successful antifascist coalition there will be more moderate forces who will want to put their energies towards participation in elections, lobbying elected officials, even working with NGOs founded by liberal capital or State agencies.

Several contributors to this book point out the trap of seeing antifascism as two street gangs dressed in black beating the tar out of each other, and called for a broad community antifascism. The question, in the short term, is about building a coalition where militants and liberals can maintain their independence to do their own thing, rather than each side trying to exclude the other as embarrassments and seek to take fascism on entirely by itself.

The contribution from Atlanta explaining how a “black bloc” intervention almost derailed a successful community anti-fascist fightback should also remind us that even our “favourite” tactics might not be the right thing to do in all places and times. For example, Xtn Alexander brings up the traditional antifascist slogan that “we go where they go, never let the fascists have the street” (4420). But there have been serious arguments made that, on January 6, 2021, Antifa forces in Washington DC made a correct tactical decision to stay off the streets, leaving the Trump-putschist forces to confront the cops and leading to something of a debacle for the Right. Again, the question is appropriateness to time and place.

3. It’s a hard idea to hold on to

The Three Way Fight model, once again, is complicated. Even in this book embodying 40 years of its development, and a rising out of debates in the movement stemming back forty years or more, the model itself seems to slip out of the grasp of some of the contributors, collapsing into a binary. Even though, earlier in the book, Matthew Lyons dismisses the Marxist-Leninist idea that fascism is a weapon to be cynically used by capitalism in extremis, Don Hamerquist’s article discussed in Part VI of this review ends up arguing that Right-wing populism is precisely that; the line of distinction between that and fascism proper seems somewhat arbitrary. Thus, the contesting parties boil down to “us” and the global capitalist order – something uncomfortably close to the Fishhook theory.

The flipside of this is a kind of perverse “millennialism” – a “faith-based” politics which tells us: of course neoliberal capitalism cannot survive much longer, against the fascist threat, the imminent collapse of the biosphere, and so on. A recent posting to Three Way Fight by Jarrod Shanahan – not reprinted in this book – puts it this way:

Built on slavery and genocide, sustained by ruthless imperialism, and riven by intrinsic antagonism that constantly erupts into seemingly senseless violence, American society was always going to come apart; the wondrous thing is how long it has lasted. The liberal democracy that Sharlet mourns is inseparable from the white supremacy and settler colonialism he rightfully decries. The end of America is nothing to be sad about; the indefinite perpetuation of the American state as it has existed for two and a half centuries would simply be a continuing humanitarian and ecological disaster.^xxv

The appeal of a perspective of an imminent “end of America” is obvious to radicals – but it negates the need for a Three Way Fight analysis, just as much as the Horseshoe and Fishhook Theories do. It assumes that one “corner” of the triangle – the bourgeois democratic state – will, someday soon, collapse under its internal contradictions. This will then leave a refreshingly uncomplicated two-fight, good guys versus bad guys, as rowan puts it (926), and we won’t have to pretend to respect “stupid liberals” anymore.

Problem is, anti-capitalists have been expecting the final crisis of capitalism “someday soon” for almost 200 years now. Trotsky was predicting it in 1938. And yet, somehow, in the absence of working-class revolution, global capitalism keeps reforming itself; sometimes increasing or decreasing the level of liberal-democratic rights, sometimes favouring one social layer while expropriating another. It would be easier if Right-wing populism wasn’t a real threat (i.e. if global capital had it “all sewn up” behind the scenes); or if global capital was going to dissolve on its own someday soon. But reality is not easy, which is why we need to hold on to the Three Way Fight analysis.

In the end, fascism is a chameleon and takes on whatever shape it needs to blend into its environment. Perhaps all the spatial metaphors are inadequate, and we should go with this Twitter comment:

I subscribe to the black hole theory of fascism. Fascism sucks people of any other political affiliation into its crushing gravity well.^xxvi

Thirty years ago, Stewart Home used the very similar image of a “sucking pit” to describe the attractions of ecofascism.^xxvii But this is why it’s so easy for those analysing fascism to take shortcuts where “programme determines theory”. If you want to hope the bourgeois state will defend us, you will be motivated towards Horseshoe Theory, arguing that anyone to the Left of Kamala Harris is a Red-Brown. If, conversely, you sincerely want to build a Red-Brown alliance, you take up the Fishhook Theory, arguing that fascism is a tool of the State and therefore your new friends in the MAGA hats can’t be fascists since they’re against the neoliberal order. And if you’re impatient for a straight fight with fascism, winner-takes-all for the future of humanity, you might be attracted by analyses suggesting that the bourgeois state is doomed to imminent collapse, after which life and politics will suddenly become much simpler.

The Three Way Fight model – the model where fascism and the bourgeois state are separate and conflicting threats – is a hard model to intellectually grasp, and hard to put into practice on the ground. But this book does the invaluable service of showing several examples of exactly how to do that in practice. Read it, debate it, act upon it.

i Draper 1969, “The ABC of National Liberation Movements”, https://www.marxists.org/archive/draper/1969/abc/abc.htm#CHAPTER4

ii As Lyons correctly points out: “Contrary to what some leftists have claimed, the Koch network never supported Trump and rejected his positions on both immigration and trade.” (3215)

iii DISCLAIMER: this author liked Against the Fascist Creep, and is friends on social media with Reid Ross.

iv Lyons’ critique of the NCRI’s rhetoric of “harmful politics as ideological disease” (3117) makes this author wonder whether The Red-Brown Zombie Plague was a good title. Oh well, too late now. For a more recent update on the NCRI, see https://threewayfight.org/anti-hate-think-tank-scapegoats-china-for-palestine-solidarity-protests/

v https://www.thedisinfoproject.org/

vi https://abeautifulresistance.org/site/2021/3/16/mission-creep

vii https://mythoughtsbornfromfire.wordpress.com/2021/09/23/i-regret-to-inform-you-all-that-rhyd-wildermuth-is-an-ally-to-bigotry/ ; https://mythoughtsbornfromfire.wordpress.com/2021/12/14/no-rhyd-wildermuth-pluralism-is-not-when-you-defend-fascism/ See previous footnote on the wooing of Deep Ecology by Red-Brown operatives.

viii https://nothingiseverlost.wordpress.com/2021/03/28/is-alexander-reid-ross-the-ceo-dad-of-antifa-on-contagion-shades-of-grey-and-the-three-way-fight/

ix https://nothingiseverlost.wordpress.com/2018/06/28/if-saying-its-a-bad-idea-to-work-with-fascists-makes-you-a-pro-war-neoliberal-then-who-was-phone-more-on-red-brown-alliances-smears-and-all-that/

x https://nothingiseverlost.wordpress.com/2018/03/17/against-the-grayzone-the-article-max-blumenthal-doesnt-want-you-to-read/

xi Also worthy of note is Cautiously Pessimistic’s thought-provoking engagement with Fightback’s anti-Red-Brown analysis: https://nothingiseverlost.wordpress.com/2018/05/22/red-babies-brown-bathwater-a-response-on-the-zombie-plague/

xii Amazingly, this does seem to be the implication of what Hamerquist says in a dialogue with Matthew Lyons further on, where he describes “the organised ruling-class effort to replace Trump” as “a thinly disguised attempted coup that risks the viability of the party system and parliamentary structure in this country”. (4115) The shocking resemblance of this analysis to a FOX News editorial will be taken up further below.

xiii See the excellent John Ganz at https://www.unpopularfront.news/p/the-enigma-of-peter-thiel. As if to confirm our analysis, while this article was being written, Ohio Senator JD Vance – an up-and-coming politician in whom Thiel has heavily invested – was named Donald Trump’s vice-presidential candidate. For more on the very much ideological appeal of a form of reactionary politics for tech billionaires and their admirers, see Elizabeth Sandifer’s Neoreaction: A Basilisk (2017). https://www.amazon.com.au/Neoreaction-Basilisk-Essays-Around-Alt-Right-ebook/dp/B0782JDGVQ

xiv https://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/making-china-marxist-again-xi-jinping-thought/

xv https://edition.cnn.com/2024/05/01/politics/gop-conservatives-hungary-cpac-orban-invs/index.html

xvi Matthew Lyon’s 2019 article in this collection, “Trump’s Shaky Capitalist Support”, gives what I feel is a more nuanced and accurate description of the Trump administration as “an unstable coalition” of neoliberals and Right-populists. (3967) It’s good to remember that many Right-authoritarian regimes, such as those of Franco and Pinochet, have featured similar coalitions.

xvii See our analysis from 2020: https://fightbackarchive.blog/2020/08/25/left-populism-at-the-dead-end-where-to-after-corbyn-and-sanders/ . The fate of France’s “New Popular Front” remains to be established, but there are certainly no signs yet that French or European capital is interested in giving it “tactical latitude”.

xviii A summary of this disastrous period from a Trotskyist point of view can be found at https://www.marxists.org/archive/hallas/works/1985/comintern/ch6.htm

xix Or, as I like to call it, the “ACAB Spring”.

xx https://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/black-lives-matter-leaders-condemn-allegations-mismanaged-funds-rcna23882

xxi https://www.newsweek.com/rise-fall-black-lives-matter-1812751

xxii https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1928/3rd/ti05.htm

xxiii https://inthesetimes.com/article/former-left-right-fascism-capitalism-horseshoe-theory

xxiv On Glenn Greenwald, see https://damonlinker.substack.com/p/how-glenn-greenwald-lost-his-way. Spiked is the descendent of the British Revolutionary Communist Party of the 1980s, which became a Right-libertarian sect whose members worked within not only the outgoing Conservative government in the UK but Nigel Farage’s hard-Right Reform party. See: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jun/23/fringe-1980s-communist-faction-no-10-attitude-racism-munira-mirza

xxv https://threewayfight.org/trumps-gospel-a-review-of-jeff-sharlets-the-undertow/

xxvi https://twitter.com/MemoriousTulpa/status/1810071028019990717

xxvii https://www.stewarthomesociety.org/pit.htm